If you spend enough time scrolling through TikTok, you might stumble into a curious corner of the algorithm: people making videos of themselves openly asking the internet to help them find friends.
We often hear conversations about a loneliness epidemic, but this particular phenomenon — the friendship epidemic — is an interesting offshoot.
It’s something we've been fascinated by for a while, and The Show sat down recently to explore it with The Show’s resident culture expert, Amanda Kehrberg.
Among other things, Kehrberg studies how digital communities shape offline life. She says that for many people, social media platforms have replaced the organic, real-world interactions that traditionally helped people build friend networks.
Full conversation
AMANDA KEHRBERG: We've talked for a while in American society that we have this kind of third place crisis, that there isn't this focus on places for us to get together and just hang out together with friends. I think our third space for so long has easily been the digital world.
SAM DINGMAN: I mean, just to give an example from my own life, I wonder if you have any experience with this: I have been messing around with TikTok, and one of the things I've found is, if I go on there and I say, “Hello, this is Sam Dingman from KJZZ. I'm reporting from this protest,” the algorithm knows how to be like, “Ah, yes, there's a reporter at a protest. I'm gonna show this to people who I think are interested in those things.”
When I put those posts up, I find that a lot of people — for me — watch them and comment, and I have all these interactions, and it makes me feel like, I'm out here. I'm doing my thing and reporting.
I also saw, at one point, this comedian on there who was doing this bit where he just tried to see how long he could go without cutting the camera in rhyming sentences. It was just one of these irreverent TikTok bits.
And I thought, "Well, I took improv classes. I bet I could do this thing. I'm gonna make a video responding to it. That's fun."
So I put this thing up. Nobody sees it.
KEHRBERG: No!
DINGMAN: And it was a mortifying moment.
KEHRBERG: Yeah.
DINGMAN: Because I thought like, "Oh my God, I've betrayed myself somehow."
KEHRBERG: Myself and my audience as well, yeah.
DINGMAN: Yes. And then I thought, what an absurd reaction to have to the fact that the algorithm just saw something that doesn't fit its framing of who I am and was like, "I don't know where to put this."
But I had the emotional response of, "Oh, well, maybe that's not me." When, of course it's me.
KEHRBERG: Yes! This is exactly it. This is the celebritization of the way that we all interact on social media. We all have that sense of we exist as these micro-celebrities, celebrity logic, we're all brands. What does that mean?
I don't think intimacy comes from that sort of algorithmic logic. It has to come from real, human, messy interactions.
DINGMAN: OK, so this is a perfect segue to talking perhaps about why Phoenix is an interesting laboratory to look at this as a dilemma, because speaking of TikTok, one of the reasons I'm curious about all this is a post I see on TikTok all the time is somebody saying like, "Hey, I live here in the Valley. Yeah. And really, like, where are the people, question mark?
TIKTOK CLIP: So honestly, I don't know who this is gonna reach. But I just want to make friends. Like if you like to go to gym, if you want to go to coffee shop, if you want to go shopping, if you want to go rock climbing, snowboarding, things like that — I'm down.
OK, here's what I'm realizing. I need friends. When there are times that I have a whole weekend off, I'm like, what do I do? You know, I just want to go do something. I just want to take advantage because... I can't just go on like dates all the time. I mean, I could, but you know.
If you live in the Phoenix area, and you've been looking for something to do, we are launching a conversations club.
DINGMAN: And I'm not making fun of any of these people, to be clear.
KEHRBERG: Oh my gosh, no, no, I've done that in my head for sure.
DINGMAN: Yes, exactly, exactly. So have you noticed this as a Phoenix phenomenon, and what do you think it is about living here that feeds into that?
KEHRBERG: I have. And I think part of the problem with that is that we have kind of that LA thing where we are so, so spread out. And I will say, if you want to have friends in a community here, man, you need that gas money. I mean, that is a serious part of the experience.
I think where Phoenix is actually very welcoming is in the sense that this is a heavy immigrant, transplant, like some people just passing through, coming back, leaving, you know, like there's just, so much movement here and that really changes the tenor of a space and I think also does make it more welcoming because it's not so rooted in, "Oh, we've all lived here for this really long time, we have all these established ways of doing things and communities and groups that are harder to break into." So I think that's a big advantage.
DINGMAN: That everybody's kind of new in town.
KEHRBERG: Yeah. There are so many different ways, I think, to connect with people because we all sort of have this sense of coming from somewhere else.
DINGMAN: So I would love to ask you, Amanda, about your personal experience with this. In particular, because one of the most grateful things for me about coming here has been, in addition to getting to have captivating conversations with you on the radio, I have had the great joy of getting to become friends with you in life outside the radio station.
And you also have this interesting network of people that you are connected to, and I have gotten to get to know some of them. And I'm curious to know: I know that the way that you found those people has been very interesting. So tell me a little bit about what that journey has been.
KEHRBERG: Yeah, absolutely. Well, this was something that I really did very intentionally because I was coming back from grad school when I was in my late 20s, kind of starting over in the Phoenix area. I'd lived here in high school and then a little bit for my master's degree and then moved away.
And so coming back, I'd been out of sort of my traditional friendship circles for a while, so they had changed. So I really wanted to kind of meet new people and also develop who I was in the midst of being a caregiver for my father.
I went to stand-up comedy classes, I went to writers workshops, I went to ballroom dance lessons, calligraphy classes.
One of the people I met at calligraphy was I think the first certified woman falconer in the state of Arizona and possibly like one of very very very few in the United States. And she had a falcon that she would take out to hunt rabbits. And her falcon's name was Amelia Airhart — A-I-R. And so sometimes the falcon would come to calligraphy class.
And then the one that I did where my really core group of friends came from, I joined a cornhole league at a local bar.
DINGMAN: I mean, all those other classes that you took and groups that you went to sound very interesting, but, It's notable to me that you feel like this really core set of connections came out of playing cornhole.
KEHRBERG: Playing cornhole!
DINGMAN: I mean, obviously, cornhole is at a bar, so maybe not everybody there is drinking, but drinking is social lubricant. But do you think that's what it is, or is there something else about the cornhole element?
KEHRBERG: I don't know. This is gonna be a ridiculous theory. But if you're sort of occupying part of your brain with something very, very goofy and silly, it can make it easier to connect with people and open up.
DINGMAN: I think this is an excellent theory. I think one of the things that's hardest when you're trying to meet new people is like, what do I say? And if you're, I'll just say, somebody like myself who tends to panic and maybe ask an overly earnest or sincere question like, "Do you ever get sad at night?"
KEHRBERG: Like Barbie?
DINGMAN: Right. Do you guys ever think about dying? Yeah. Right.
KEHRBERG: Yeah.
DINGMAN: That's too much sometimes when you're just getting to know somebody.
KEHRBERG: Yeah.
DINGMAN: And The reason we sometimes feel a tendency towards those questions is because it is a way of experiencing connection with people. But with something like cornhole, as you pointed out, the thing you're doing is inherently absurd.
KEHRBERG: Yes.
DINGMAN: So no matter what you say, people are gonna be like, Yeah.
KEHRBERG: Yeah.
DINGMAN: I can't believe that, you know, I spilled my beer when I tossed this beanbag towards that plank of wood either.
KEHRBERG: Exactly. Oh my gosh. Or like the most incredible moments when a beanbag hits the fan, the ceiling fan. and then bounces off in a different direction. There are just so many opportunities for whimsy.
DINGMAN: Yes.
KEHRBERG: And you know what? That's what adult friendship really needs to flourish, I think, is whimsy. True.
DINGMAN: Amanda Kehrberg, thank you very much.
KEHRBERG: Thank you so much.
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Recently, a company called Timeleft has been targeting 30-something folks on social media, showing attendees laughing and toasting at cocktail bars and restaurants. -
For the last couple weeks, The Show's Sam Dingman has been exploring the various ways people find friendship and community here in the Valley — a place where it’s not always easy to do that. -
Jalen lives and works here in Phoenix — he moved here about two and a half years ago. His conversation club is now in its fourth month — and Jalen takes it very seriously. -
If you spend enough time scrolling through TikTok, you might stumble into a curious corner of the algorithm: people making videos of themselves openly asking the internet to help them find friends
